The Inquisitor had objected of course, as had his toadies, insisting that there was no way we'd get past any of the security checkpoints. Sarge's suggestion that we join up with the tech-priest hadn't worked, since the cogboy wasn't in comm contact, and we were told that any attempt to grav-chute off the sub-spire would get us shot down by Cartel security fliers. There was a bit more arguing, and then Doc raised the question of how the OTHER team had extracted. A short run back into the burning (and now obviously tilting) bank and a bit of grav-chuting down that big stairwell later, we caught sight of a familiar pink mohawk and Sarge nearly got his head shot off as he tried to land in the middle of a trio of incredibly twitchy Inquisition agents.

Of the group, the only one we'd seen before was the Ganger, though we recognized the voice of a grizzled older man in power armor as the one who'd yelled at her. The third agent was a longcoat and wide-brimmed hat wearing man with some sort of fringe-world accent, who seemed to be the least offended by our impressive collection of smells. They gave us some very dubious looks when we asked about catching a ride, and the Ganger made a few pointed comments about people who shot other people in the ass expecting favors. Sarge, who'd entirely ran out of fucks to give, told her to shut up and look on the bright side, since he'd been originally aiming for her in the head before Sciscitat decided he wanted a prisoner. This won a laugh from the fringe-worlder and caught the attention of the armored man, who demanded to know if Sciscitat was really commanding the operation in person. Sarge tried to go poker faced, but relented when Nubby cheerfully informed them that "Quisitor Asshat" was sitting up in orbit on his comfy spaceship. As Tink and Twitch chimed in with their own opinions of our commanding officer and teammates, Sarge saluted the ghost of operational security; Doc assured him it was probably for the best.

We spent most of the uneventful hike out through the maintenance tunnels talking with our new friends. Sadly the old armored guy (who turned out to be yet another Interrogator) wasn't that talkative, and the limping Ganger mostly just swore and glared at us, even after grudgingly accepting some drugs from Doc. The fringe-worlder, on the other hand, seemed happy to tell us as much as his boss would let him, and over the following two hours he painted us quite a picture. Admittedly it was conveyed in a nigh-incomprehensible drawling accent interspersed with far too many "quaint" sayings about his granpappy's ol' grox, but it was still more than we'd gotten from our own team.

The gist of it was that everything was a complete clusterfuck. Basically, when the Conspiracy had made their move on Oak, they'd stolen several eldritch artifacts from one of his little facilities. The artifacts had been taken to the Conspiracy's base here on Haarlock's Wager, which we knew about because one of Oak's allies had followed their ship. Unfortunately, instead of waiting for backup like a sane person, this Inquisitor had just gone in guns blazing, which is why this was our problem now. To the guy's credit though, it was also why the planet's third moon had a shiny new metal-rich asteroid belt around it instead of a top-secret orbital facility and only one traitorous Inquisitor in the system instead of four.

Unfortunately that last traitorous Inquisitor had proved to be a bit a problem. According to the fringe-worlder she was just a junior member of the Conspiracy who'd actually arrived in system after the attack had lready started, but she turned out to be a powerful Sorceress with a pet daemonhost, which she'd sicced on the Inquisitor's vessel while he was busy. The end result was our guy being trapped on a hostile planet, desperately trying to hide the artifacts and get word out before he was torn apart by an enraged daemonhost. He was only moderately successful.

Where the fringe-worlder and his teammates came into this was about a week later, when one of these messages reached their Inquisitor (counting ours this made him the SEVENTH one involved in this mess). Now, according to our narrator, his Inquisitor wasn't actually one of Oak's allies. In fact, he apparently held a pretty deep grudge against the man and everyone associated with him on account of how one of Oak's little training missions had stumbled into the middle of a decade-long investigation of his and blown the whole thing out of the water (we checked, it wasn't us). Despite not liking Oak, and not having ever heard of the Conspiracy before either, whatever had been in that message had been enough to get the fringe-worlder's boss on board.

So this new Inquisitor and his team had touched down about a week ahead of us to find the first guy dead, and the Sorceress tearing the entire hive-world apart in a desperate search for the artifacts. From there it had been a sort of competitive scavenger hunt, with the fringe-worlder's team having the advantage of a big dead-drop full of clues and directions, while the Sorceress had the aid of the entire planetary government. Well, partial aid: it'd been her now-dead Conspiracy bosses who'd had the planet under their thumbs and a lot of that power had died with them. The Sorceress was apparently some sort of master manipulator though, and she was steadily regaining control. In any case, the team had snagged one artifact with no problems, had been beat to another by the Sorceress, and had been in the process of claiming the third artifact from the Cartel when everything hit the fan.

Hey Shoggy. I want you to know that I love your writing, love your stories, and I pathetically check your site somewhat regularly just to see if you have a new AGP story up. It always cracks me up. Thank you man.

Interestingly, nobody present (aside from the Ganger) held us to blame for the deal with the Cartel going south. They'd already been prepping in case that notoriously mercenary institution turned on them, hence their sabotage team in the basement and all the heavy weapons they'd brought to the Bank, but the hand-off had actually been going smoothly right up to the point where the Sorceress had landed on the roof. A short chat between her and the Cartel's Planetary Executive Officer later, Security was trying (very unsuccessfully) to kill them.

At this point we had to supply some of our own details, explaining that our team had actually been trying to beat them to the prize, and all the confusion with us misidentifying them. The fringe-worlder reciprocated with the story of how their Inquisitor had nearly run into Face and our Assassin while all of them tried (and failed) to kill the Sorceress before she escaped in the PEO's armored flier. The rest we all pretty much knew: everyone started working together, Sciscitat was tasked with grabbing the artifact, but had us destroy it instead for some reason, and both teams were able to make a mostly-clean escape thanks to the "spontaneous" explosion of the power station under the Bank. Nobody had even died: most of the other team (including the tech-priest and Sister we'd shot up) had extracted via a disguised flier, while the three walking with us had pulled out on foot after getting cut off from the LZ.

So really, when you looked at things objectively, it had been a pretty successful mission. Sure, a few people had gotten shot (three times in the Cleric's case), the Arbites might've impounded our vehicles, and we'd heard some very building-collapsy sounds somewhere above us on our walk. Oh, and we'd destroyed the artifact instead of stealing it, but that had been Sciscitat's idea, not ours… Still though, not a COMPLETE failure right?

Actually, one of the two Inquisitors proved to be surprisingly reasonable about the whole thing, it just wasn't ours. We met the second team's Inquisitor as we finally climbed out of the maintenance tunnels a good two kilometers away from the Cartel's sub-spire. We exited into a disreputable looking garage, which was populated by a bunch of biker types (who could've easily been the Ganger's siblings) as well as a tired-looking truck driver and his vehicle. While our companions paid off the bikers, the truck driver took in our filth-encrusted appearances and announced that we would be riding the back. This led to a bit of difficulty when the truck's cargo area turned out to be half-full of the exact sort of boxes and metal drums that Orks hide in to ambush unsuspecting guardsmen, at least according to Twitch that is. This in itself wasn't a problem, we were perfectly willing to check the boxes for kommandos/loot before boarding, the issues was the way the driver assured us his cargo was ork-free BEFORE any of us had mentioned them. Twitch noticed this and reacted about as well as you'd expect.

Fortunately, the Inquisitor (as he was introduced to us after things had calmed down) had just as good a reaction time as Twitch, and enough telekinetic skill to jerk three successive weapons out of the demolitions trooper's grip. Even more fortunately, he proved to be a good sport about the whole thing; he even gave Twitch back his guns and let us inspect the truck's contents (no Orks, but nothing worth pocketing either sadly) before personally driving us back to our base.

We didn't get to see the meeting between the two Inquisitors; in fact, we weren't even allowed into the base. Our teammates at the door, the Interrogator especially, acted like it'd been OUR idea to spend half a day tromping around in the sewers and refused to let us in until we'd visited the shallow pool of chemical-laden water that the locals referred to as a "lake". At least all the acid meant we didn't need to bother with soap... or scrubbing… Tink recommended that we clean our weapons and more delicate equipment somewhere else. Anyway, by the time we were finally readmitted to our own damn base the other team and their Inquisitor had left, leaving us without any handy distractions when Sciscitat had us step into the secure conference room for our debriefing.

Honestly, it didn't go as bad as we'd expected, partially because Sciscitat too distracted with something else to properly chew us out, but mostly because Snitch wasn't there to rat us out as we creatively shifted blame onto various other parties (mostly the other team and the tech-priest). Still though, there was a lot of yelling about insubordination, stupidity, Arbites, and sharing intel with the other team. He seemed especially peeved at us for bringing that other Inquisitor to our secret base, which was a little unfair since we hadn't said a word about it. I mean, he was a psyker, what were we supposed to do? Shoot him before he read our minds? We did point out that Twitch had actually tried to do that, but that only got us yelled at more. Eventually though, Sciscitat got tired of yelling at us and getting monosyllabic responses, and ordered us back out to our quarters, where we were to "Just stay out of the way and try not to unsuccessfully kidnap any more interplanetaraly famous Arbites."

The days that followed were filled with tireless Inquisitorial investigation as both our team and the other worked to decode the location of the next artifact before the Sorceress. At least we were pretty sure that's what everyone was doing, our involvement primarily consisted of watching the base while everyone else was out and playing poker in our quarters when they weren't. This suited us fine: we were busy enough between dealing unpleasant side effects of the Munitorum-grade antibiotics Doc forced on us and taking as many showers as possible.

Despite our non-involvement we did pick up a few scraps of information. For instance, we found out the scan-van was somehow recovered from Arbites custody after only a day, as (to our disbelief and dismay) was our shitty van. How it survived was a mystery; Twitch was especially up in arms, insisting that his anti-theft device should've burned out every scrap of electronics and left the engine beyond repair. Despite that though, it rolled into our garage as barely-functional as ever, with only scorch marks and a half-melted pair of seats to testify to its immolation. We weren't sure whether to blame the tech-priest or Sciscitat for this, so we just settled for hating them both.

On the note of the vans, Sarge was called into a short briefing on the subject of the Traffic Officer, where he learned that the man had been reinstated as some variety of Judge in the Jack Hive Arbites. There was a bunch of political stuff involved too, something about the Arbites being pissed at the planetary government, the important part was the Officer was now leading an investigation into what had happened at the Cartel's sub-spire. This was technically good news, since a big investigation would cause more problems for our enemies than us, but was counteracted by the descriptions of five "rogue PDF stormtroopers" that had been given to every Arbite and traffic cop in the hive. Our orders to stay inside were reiterated.

>>54595078>In any case, the team had snagged one artifact with no problems, had been beat to another by the Sorceress, and had been in the process of claiming the third artifact from the Cartel when everything hit the fan.

inb4 collecting all 8 notdragonballs to wish the emperor be revived in a new body but nubby wastes it on getting his legs back so he can sell his augments

>>54595552Actual 3D model art! (that's an entire more D than you usually get!)

>>54595432The spares have been living in a quantum state on Oak's various other teams in case they were needed. There was a short period where some of them were on the OB on its way out towards Tau space just to give a IG reason they could be available. Some of the backups, along with a few other bit characters, will be making little cameos in the final showdown.

As for PC control, without getting bogged down in details, it's essentially a matter of one player having official command while the rest of us scream advice at him like drunk theater-goers. Controlled NPCs, like Fumbles, tend to be more a free-for-all.

>>54595638Endings are important. Imagine how many series would've been improved by coming to a satisfactory conclusion instead of slowly burning out.

Also, we ran out of play time. Still haven't got everyone back together again for serious yet, life and shit, y'know.

>>54595552>the descriptions of five "rogue PDF stormtroopers" that had been given to every Arbite and traffic cop in the hiveI wonder how much that fucked with the Arbites.

>The first seemed incapable of not being angry>The second looked like a human/grot hybrid with metal legs>The third twitched constantly and occasionally screamed things about kommandos>The fourth never stopped saying sorry but was otherwise pretty normal>The fifth was a bit short, had a plasma gun and hardly ever looked away from his dataslate>Oh, they were also covered in shit

By the end of the week Doc had gotten all of us, including those of our teammates who'd gotten themselves shot, back into fighting shape. The one exception to this was Snitch, who'd developed some sort of irrational nausea around Doc, and kept spewing everywhere until the medic gave up and let someone else try treating the psyker's minor injuries and infections. Tink meanwhile, had repaired Doc's grav-chute despite the medic's protests against ever using the damn thing again. He also made a few more attempts to fine-tune his uncooperative plasma weapon, but got yelled at when he tried to test it inside the base. Twitch and Nubby, through a dedicated campaign of whining, dark comments about what Twitch might build himself, and threats to go to the other team, managed to convince Sciscitat to refill our limited supply of explosives. Nubby then went to the other team anyway, but only managed to score a handful of nades off the Ganger before her boss yelled at her for trafficking on Inquisition time and stopped bringing her to our base for meetings. Sarge just kept an eye on the rest of us and enforced that not-leaving-the-base rule until the next artifact was found.

Our first clue that progress had been made was our entire team returning in the middle of the night and rushing into the communications room. The second was when the other Inquisitor showed up at our hab unit's front door with half his posse and informed Sarge that he would level the entire hab-block if we tried to go get the artifact without him. Sarge, not being paid enough to deal with this sort of Inquisitorial power-politics bullshit, just showed them all into the comm room. Ignoring the massive amount of stink-eye directed towards him by our teammates for doing this, Sarge invited the rest of us in to help keep an eye on the dangerous people we'd just let into the base (really though, it was just so we'd all be there to protest if they tried to send us into the sewers again).

>>54595719>Whenever Shoggy posts, the outpouring of joy from /tg/ is almost surreal. I think Shoggy might be /tg/'s favorite writefag by popular vote. Then again, he's got some pretty stiff competition...

>>54595699>As for PC control, without getting bogged down in details, it's essentially a matter of one player having official command while the rest of us scream advice at him like drunk theater-goersI imagine that works really well for Squad Coherence, at least. Also, it sounds hilarious!

>Controlled NPCs, like Fumbles, tend to be more a free-for-all.In other words, /qst/

>>54595724>Nubby then went to the other team anyway, but only managed to score a handful of nades off the Ganger before her boss yelled at her for trafficking on Inquisition time and stopped bringing her to our base for meetings.

Sciscitat's usual self-praise-filled briefing style was hampered somewhat by the presence of the other Inquisitor, who had a tendency to make pointed sarcastic remarks about who'd actually done what work. We decided we liked the man, psyker or not. Anyway, skipping over all the barbed comments, unasked-for critiques, and other such low-level conversational sniping, the briefing started with a picture of a rune-covered box with a skull for a latch, whether this was the artifact itself or if it was actually inside the box was not explained to us. Sciscitat claimed the box had been given to a small local courier service by the now-dead Inquisitor, but instead of being quietly hidden away as he'd ordered, it'd wound up in the hands of the biggest underhive Crime Lord in neighboring Queen Hive.

The artifact falling into the hands of the local underworld wasn't really that unexpected, in fact the dead Inquisitor had mentioned the possibility in his notes, the odd part was what the Crime Lord had decided to do with it. Instead of immediately fencing the artifact, or hoarding it away until the heat died down, this guy decided the best thing to do with this evil spooky box thing was to use it as the grand prize for some sort of high-stakes eldritch artifact poker tournament. Seriously.

Needless to say, everyone was a little bit dubious; even Sciscitat, who was the one presenting the evidence, kept pausing to re-read his notes and rhetorically ask WHY. This wasn't even some megalomaniacal rogue trader or spoiled planetary noble, by all accounts the Crime Lord was a shrewd, level-headed, hardworking businessman with only a minor tendency towards throwing rivals into vats of boiling toxic waste. It really made no sense, and the other team's Inquisitor kept insisting that it must be some sort of trap, but eventually he became resigned to fact the he lived in a universe where common sense no longer existed. We welcomed him to the club.

>>54595904>this guy decided the best thing to do with this evil spooky box thing was to use it as the grand prize for some sort of high-stakes eldritch artifact poker tournament. Seriously.>by all accounts the Crime Lord was a shrewd, level-headed, hardworking businessman with only a minor tendency towards throwing rivals into vats of boiling toxic waste.

>>54595773There are a few who are close, but they're inactive. Like (and this is the one I'll get flamed for) WHM, Wasteland Warrior, Tyrant of The East (arguably), and depending on how you define writefag also Rogue Psyker.

>>54595904>Instead of immediately fencing the artifact, or hoarding it away until the heat died down, this guy decided the best thing to do with this evil spooky box thing was to use it as the grand prize for some sort of high-stakes eldritch artifact poker tournament. Seriously.

Is the a Harlan's Wager kinda thing? Like, everybody is irrationally obsessed with gambling?

>>54596021With his probability bending psyker bullshit, Bane Johns would be ideal to send into a poker match. For the sake of the AGP, hopefully he is on a Black Ship headed to Terra or some black box Inquisition facility they can't find or dig him out of in time.

The other Inquisitor, perhaps still feeling a bit unhinged from his change in worldview, announced that our only option was to enter the poker tournament ourselves. Surprisingly, Face immediately seconded this, volunteering to be the one to enter, and even more surprisingly, so did the Assassin, who proposed using the one artifact the second team had recovered themselves as our ante. The idea began picking up speed at an alarming rate, with several of our theoretically sane teammates, as well as Tink and Nubby, excitedly offering suggestions. The rest of us had enough experience with bad ideas to recognize a truly terrible one in the making, and watched with growing unease.

Doc made some futile attempts to politely interject some sanity into the conversation, while Twitch just muttered to himself about psykers making everyone suicidal tightened his lead-foil lined helmet. Sarge was steeling himself for a more-yelly attempt than Doc's, but was beaten to it as Sciscitat blew his hologram up to maximum size and volume, and loudly demanded to know whether everyone had lost their minds. We deeply appreciated the ensuing lecture on why we would NOT be entering a high profile poker tournament guaranteed to be attended by our enemies, or risk the single artifact in our possession in said tournament, or count on some sort card-reading of x-ray eyepatch to guarantee us victory. Admittedly, we could've done without him using us as a reference point for the relative stupidity of an idea, but whatever.

As Sciscitat wound down everyone looked a bit sheepish; especially the other team's Inquisitor, who kept shaking his head and quietly asking himself what he'd been thinking. They all perked back up before long though, and by the end of the briefing had hacked out a "far simpler" twenty-seven stage plan to sneak in and steal the evil box thing while tournament was in process. Thankfully our part was going to be nice, simple, and almost certainly sewage-free.

While two teams of highly trained Inquisitorial agents infiltrated the spiretop fortress-mansion of a slightly megalomaniacal Crime Lord, we were assigned the arduous task of making sure nobody stole our vans. It was a tricky job, that entailed a lot of very difficult napping, card-playing, smoking, and fast-food eating, but someone had to do it.

The Crime Lord's mansion was on its own little spire only a few hundred meters above the Queen Hive's smog clouds, and had only two major entrances. One was a big gaudy landing pad flanked by disguised anti-air batteries, where a steady stream of incredibly rich people were landing their flying vehicles and making their way into the mansion's main level. The other was a small utilitarian retractable causeway on the far side of the mansion; for service vehicles and all those non-rich people who were regretfully necessary for keeping things running. Guess which one we got to stake out.

While the scan-van positioned itself to have a good view of the landing pad, our shitty van and a pair of far-better quality unmarked getaway vehicles were parked in the large parking garage that served as a sort of waiting area for the causeway. As it turned out, our guarding of the vans was actually pretty necessary, since apparently the Crime Lord's normal business had all been put on hold until his insane poker tournament was over. We found ourselves rubbing elbows with a wide variety of terminally-bored people, ranging from underhive gangers, to mid-hive businessmen, to a bunch of off-planet mercs with a very unhappy-looking man tied up in the back of their vehicle. Between our unmarked, but obviously guard-issue gear, and our own palpable aura of slightly-paranoid boredom, we fit right in as we settled down to wait for our teammates to get on with the mission.

>>54596265Nah. 27-stage plans are the hallmark of AGP Inquisitorial teams. Fortunately Sarge & Friends can normally trim these things down to "Blow it up" or "Shoot it until it's paste, then stomp on the paste until it stops moving"

For lack of anything better to do (and because we'd been ordered to) we kept an eye on the vehicles going over the causeway. Not that anybody actually expected anything important to come in that way: the Inquisitors had intel that the Sorceress would be attending the tournament and had distributed some pictures of her to us, but she'd obviously be landing up at the pad with all the rich people. The most anyone expected were some reinforcements if the Crime Lord discovered our infiltration, or possibly a few APCs of Secret Police if the Sorceress decided to take a more direct approach, both of which would be dead obvious. Since Twitch tended to watch hard enough for a dozen people, he was put in charge of this while the rest of us kicked up our feet and made the best of our first excursion outside the base in over a week.

Over the course of about three hours of idling Twitch managed to spot a dozen "suspicious" catering vehicles, Sarge punched out a ganger who seemed too interested in one of the getaway-cars, Tink and Doc learned never to buy a "genuine meat product" Sausage-inna-Bun from a street vendor, and Nubby got told that while spitting over the edge at passing vehicles was almost acceptable, hucking beer bottles at them definitely wasn't. Deprived of his entertainment, our self-appointed quartermaster wandered off for a while and met various Guys who he proceeded to get to Know; he returned a bit later to tell the rest of us that he was a little short.

Once we were done laughing, Nubby clarified that he'd worked out a dubious chain of deals with the assorted scum around us, but hadn't brought quite enough merchandise to get the deal he wanted. He asked Sarge if, hypothetically, our teammates needed all those fancy little bells and whistles their vehicles had (and ours didn't) more than we needed, say, a krak missile launcher. Sarge decided it was time to take a break from guarding the getaway cars. This proved to be an incredibly good decision.

>>54596197Your wish is my command, anon. WW's best known bit (AFAICT) is http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5114798/ and he's also got a whole tag: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=wasteland+warriorI can't find ToTE's posts, but he archived Confessions of a Wayward Son and God of Death (which wasn't posted here, but was also good) on ff.net. He then vanished off the face of the earth: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2207877/Tyrant-of-the-EastRogue Psyker was responsible for Toyhammer. I'm uncertain if it was ever posted here, so his status as writefag is unclear: fanfiction.net/s/5474237/1/40k_ToyHammerFinally, WHM (Waffle House Millionaire) is responsible for what is probably the most famous piece of writefaggotry ever posted to /tg/. I mean, do I even have to say the name? He's also responsible for Boxcar Joe and some other great stuff: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Waffle+House+Millionaire

Nubby (with Doc enlisted as stuff-carrier) was returning with his loot when word came from the Scan-Van that the Sorceress was landing. Everyone but Twitch huddled around Tink as he pulled out his dataslate and opened a video feed we were pretty sure he wasn't supposed to have access to. We watched as a small but incredibly fancy-looking flier, which had last been seen flying away from the Cartel's spire, landed on the pad and a woman who perfectly matched our picture of the Sorceress got out. Things then became slightly confusing as a second, identical woman exited, followed by a tuxedo-wearing man who both women draped themselves on.

As the trio joined the crowd of planetary nobles, rich criminals, and wannabe rogue traders (or whoever else attends an evil-artifact poker tournament), the team's general channel exploded into chatter about which was the real Sorceress. The vid began to lurch sickeningly as the servo-skull broadcasting it was maneuvered in for a closer look, and Sciscitat decided that *now* was the right time to treat everyone to a lecture on the efficaciousness of the classic body-double trick, what it said about the Sorceress' mental state, and the counter strategies he himself had developed over his years as an expert observer. Back behind us, Twitch announced to no one in particular that he saw another suspicious, and potentially Ork-filled, vehicle.

Doc interrupted our Inquisitor's lecture to ask whether the tux-wearing man, who was generally being left out as the vid panned between the two potential Sorceresses, was the Daemonhost we'd heard about, and whether something warpy might be going on. Sciscitat instructed us all to stay quiet and stick our duties, and then asked Snitch pretty much that exact same question. As the psyker spewed a bunch of jargon about astral signatures or whatever, Twitch informed us that things were getting really-really suspicious now, and asked where Nubby had put that krak-launcher.

>The one exception to this was Snitch, who'd developed some sort of irrational nausea around Doc, and kept spewing everywhere until the medic gave up and let someone else try treating the psyker's minor injuries and infections.

Twitch switching from his usual paranoid muttering to a more active problem solving mode was enough to get our attention. Sarge pulled himself away from the the vid feed to see what had him riled up while Doc quietly prepped a tranq. The two of them arrived to see the bridge below suddenly empty of all vehicles aside from what looked to be a sort of armored luxury vehicle. The courtyard at the far end of the bridge was similarly devoid of all the caterers and servants that'd been there earlier, instead there were nearly three times as many of the eclectically armed Goons that served as security for the Crime Lord's manor. The reason for the increased security became apparent as a portly, overdressed, but still somehow menacing man came out of the manor. Sarge swore under his breath, and was about to interrupt our teammates to inform them that the Crime Lord was meeting someone at the back entrance, when the armored limo stopped just inside the courtyard's big gate. Sarge, Doc, and Twitch all froze as yet another strikingly beautiful woman climbed out of the vehicle and a creeping feeling of dread washed over all three of them.

The woman who exited the armored limo looked almost nothing like the pictures of the Sorceress we'd been given, but the almost supernatural grace and poise with which she greeted the Crime Lord were gnawingly familiar. As a faint musical laugh drifted up from the courtyard, Twitch suddenly tensed and started rocking back and forth while swearing under his breath, and then darted away towards the van. Doc and Sarge shared a looking of dawning horror as they finally recognized the Inquisitorial traitor, and apparent Conspiracy member, formerly known as Interrogator Angelica Dominicus.

>>54596595Shoggy had indicated that Snitch had already gone a bit down the corruption trail when the AGP met back up with Asshat and crew. I figured Snitch had gotten himself a few more corruption or insanity points when whom/what in that relic got blown to hell and pushed him to another malignancy/phobia with Doc as the focus.

The face, hairstyle, and a lot else were different than we remembered, especially inasmuch as they were actually moving instead of medically paralyzed, but there was absolutely no doubt it was her. Honestly, we probably still would've recognized those mannerisms, posture, and voice even if it was coming from a man. Or Daemon, Ork, or Dreadnaught for that matter: they'd been practically burned into our brains during the months she'd been our Interrogator. The real question wasn't who she was, but rather how in the Emperor's name she'd gotten here, given that the last time we'd seen her some of Oak's most humorless minions were taking her off for a little chat about why she'd been orchestrating giant chaotic blood-rituals instead of purging genestealers. We filed that question away with several others we intended to ask Oak if we ever managed to get our hands on the scheming bastard.

Of course, once we accepted the fact that or ex-Interrogator was here, flirting with the Crime Lord below us, as opposed to dead, or at least rotting in psy-shielded sensory deprivation tank, the next few logical leaps were easy. She was obviously part of the Conspiracy, and just as obviously was the Inquisitor-killing, government-suborning, daemonhost-summoning Sorceress fighting us for the artifacts, regardless of any and all evidence to the contrary. It was just how the universe worked, at least according to Twitch, whose world-view seemed increasingly credible with every passing mission.

Anyway, while Twitch ran around freaking out, Sarge and Doc tried to explain the situation and its ramifications to a curious Tink, who'd never met our ex-Interrogator. This meant, rather disastrously, that nobody had much attention to spare for Nubby. Before anyone could think to stop him, the idiotic little trooper jumped up onto the barricade, waving his arms and joyfully greeting his "Jelly-Baby", shouting that it was him, Nubby, and that he knew they'd let her out of prison someday.

Down in the courtyard Sorceress' head whipped around, and while we were too distant to actually see her expression curdle as she recognized Nubby's sawed-off form, we sure as hell felt it. Sarge lunged for the little idiot and yanked him off his perch a fraction of a second before a bolt of warp-lightning passed through the space where his head had been. Our cover being very definitely blown, Doc and Tink immediately returned fire, but with only limited success. The medic's lasbolts merely plinked of a sort of psychic shield, while Tink, who still wasn't sure what exactly was going on but knew when to shut up and shoot, missed her entirely and loudly blamed the sights on his gun. The kludgily-converted Astartes plasma weapon, which the rest of us were beginning to expect had a bit more of a machine spirit than your average lasgun, responded by venting a jet of superheated has in the general direction of Tink's face. The bright side of all this, was that instead of carefully aiming for a headshot, the Sorceress settled for just firing her next lightning-bolt into the concrete barrier.

That was not our best moment. Four of us were on the ground, ears ringing and covered with small shrapnel wounds. Nubby was yelling at everyone to stop shooting before we accidently hit his girlfriend, Doc and Sarge were trying to get back up and do just that, and Tink was hurling yet more abuse at his plasma weapon while trying to hold it as far from his face as possible. Down across the bridge, in a show of comically misguided gallantry, the Crime Lord pushed the Sorceress behind himself and instructed his Goons to open fire. Simultaneously, the doors on the armored limo slammed open to reveal a team of far-better armed and armored men and women, and the big anti-vehicle defenses above the courtyard gate began tracking towards our position. Then Twitch fired the krak launcher he'd ran and got while the rest of us were fooling around.

>>54596821>Before anyone could think to stop him, the idiotic little trooper jumped up onto the barricade, waving his arms and joyfully greeting his "Jelly-Baby", shouting that it was him, Nubby, and that he knew they'd let her out of prison someday.

As much as Twitch wanted to drop the krak directly onto the Sorceress, it was just too small a target over too large a distance for a dumbfire missile. Which was why, as he popped up at the next barricade over, Twitch muttered a prayer to the Emperor and Fate in general and took aim at the armored limo. Specifically, at the recently opened door and the large pile of ammunition and safe-cracking explosives sitting on the rear seat inside. The Sorceress' retinue had about a second to try and dive for cover before an explosion a good order of magnitude larger than even the most powerful krak missile reduced them to the consistency of chunky salsa. The Sorceress, being a good deal farther away, psychically shielded, and with the bulk of the Crime Lord between her and the epicenter, was merely tossed across the courtyard like a gore-splattered ragdoll. For a brief moment, Twitch thought he could even hear her terrified and enraged screaming she she bounced off the far wall, but it turned out to just be Sciscitat.

The Inquisitor was angry with us to say the least, but we weren't in the mood to indulge him in one of his little tantrums. We no longer cared about his silly artifact mission, we had a new objective and were going to carry it out with a bloody vengeance. Sarge's report was terse, it had to be given that he was taking potshots at the fleeing Sorceress between each sentence. He told Sciscitat who we'd seen and who we'd killed, as well as what we suspected and what we intended to do about it. He cut off the Inquisitor's protests with a simple request that the man either do something useful or stick to his own business. He and his minions could keep doing whatever it was they had planned; WE were going to go kill that scheming, manipulative little bimbo once and for all.

The mood of the moment was slightly spoiled by Nubby's complaints that it wasn't her fault and we should just capture her instead, Sarge said he'd take it under consideration.

The problem with our self-appointed kill mission was that the target was currently on the far side of a long cover-less bridge and a few dozen hostile, heavily armed men. Fortunately though, said heavily armed men weren't reacting in anything approaching a coordinated fashion. At the time we put it down to a mixture of poor training and the fiery death of their boss, but we were later informed that it "undoubtedly" had more to do with a large-scale attack on their comm network flooding them with contradictory orders. Apparently Sciscitat had taken Sarge's advice about actually doing something useful for a change to heart. In any case, the Goons in the courtyard were wildly spraying fire across the entire garage, and while most of the people inside it with us were keeping their heads down, a significant portion had started shooting back. The cherry on top though, was the sudden arrival of what seemed like half a battalion of Secret Police, complete with air support. Complete and utter chaos doesn't even begin to cover it.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts to snipe the fleeing Sorceress, Sarge announced it was time to pursue while everyone was busy shooting each other. His initial order to put on our grav-chutes and jump across the gap to the Manor was rejected by the rest of us on the grounds that slowly floating through a massive crossfire like so much living skeet was a terrible idea. The subsequent plan to drive across the bridge in our teammates'' suped-up getaway cars was much better, but met with a minor snag when it turned out that a little more than just their hubcaps and radios were missing. Nubby shrugged and said he'd been intending to get some "cheaper" replacement wheels later; the rest of us just glared at him as we climbed into the only other vehicle available.

Secret Police and Gangers alike stopped shooting to stare as a shitty burned out van barreled through the garage, skidding around the down ramps at several times the posted speed limit. Inside, Tink was alternating between swearing and screaming as he attempted to maintain speed through the melee, while the rest of us bounced around the seatless interior like pingpong balls and tried not to step on any loose explosives. We made it nearly the whole way down without taking more than the odd stray bullet, but at the second to last level Tink abruptly found himself staring down the barrel of a matte-black Chimera's multi-las turret. The techie screamed as he slammed vehicle straight from third to reverse and backed up the ramp just barely ahead of a stream of high-caliber lasfire.

Tink spun the van back around as it reached the top of the ramp, while in the back Twitch, Nubby, and Doc all yelled at eachother about how best to tackle the approaching Chimera. Sarge told all three to shut up, pointed at a large hole in one of the garage's walls opening roughly over where the bridge was, and told Tink to gun it. As the edge of the hole approached, Tink realized two things. Firstly, that a two-story drop looks a lot bigger when you're about to drive over it, and secondly, that the bridge we were aiming for had begun to retract. Given that he knew how bad the van's brakes were, the techie did the only thing he could think of, and screamed at everyone to turn their grav-chutes on.

In what would've been a sweet-ass action shot if it weren't for the quality of the vehicle involved, the shitty van shot out of the side of the garage at its rather paltry maximum speed. The ungainly vehicle sailed through the air in a noticeably shallower than normal arc, barely clearing the widening gap between the garage and the retracting bridge, and coming down on top of a pair of stunned Goons.

>>54597129>When the universe has run its course>When the stars themselves have grown cold and died>As the last trace of heat left in the cosmos has faded>There will be one sound left echoing through the void

Between more or less attempting to lift a van from the inside and the subsequent landing it was a minor miracle that nobody broke anything. Well, not any bones at least, the grav-chutes sure as hell weren't going to be seeing any more use though. We disentangled ourselves from their remains and grabbed for our weapons as Tink weaved through the crossfire towards the wrecked courtyard gate and the burning remains of the armored limo. This approach was finally enough to focus some hostile attention on us, which we reciprocated.

As we burst through the flaming wreckage into the courtyard, wildly firing out in every direction and screaming at the top of our lungs, Twitch paused to ask himself if, WE were the real Orks all along. This philosophical quandary was interrupted by Doc, who'd spotted the Sorceress sprinting for the big doors at the far end of the courtyard. Everyone who could manage a shot out the front window, except Nubby, laid fire on her, but despite the heels and dress she made damn good time, and the few solid shots we landed weren't enough to break down her shield before she'd made it through and slammed the heavy doors behind her. We weren't going to let a little thing like that stop us though, in fact we weren't even going to let it slow us down.

On their own, the poorly-aimed shots Sarge got off with Tink's unreliable plasma gun wouldn't have been enough, but fortunately that wasn't our only heavy weapon. At the time we'd been entering the van, the discovery of two more krak launchers and revelation that Nubby had hawked the getaway cars' wheels for an EXTRA one earned the little trooper yet more ire, but we all quickly came around to his and Twitch's way of thinking. The second of our three anti-armor missiles blew a sizable hole in the doors, which Tink subsequently widened.

The horrified expression on the Sorceress' face as the shitty van burst through the doors and barreled down the hallway towards her was something to treasure.

>>54597278>As we burst through the flaming wreckage into the courtyard, wildly firing out in every direction and screaming at the top of our lungs, Twitch paused to ask himself if, WE were the real Orks all along.

>>54597278>As we burst through the flaming wreckage into the courtyard, wildly firing out in every direction and screaming at the top of our lungs, Twitch paused to ask himself if, WE were the real Orks all along.That would probably cure Twitch's Paranoia if he decided yes, but then he'd succumb to psycopathy and bloodlust.

Shocked Goons and housekeeping staff dove for cover as Tink tried and failed to keep control on the Manor's carpeted floor. The shitty van spun to a halt well short of its intended target, but that didn't stop Sarge from taking a few potshots out the driver window at the stunned Sorceress before she fled down a side hall. Tink swore at the noncom's as one of the shots nearly took his nose off, and slammed the van into reverse, throwing Sarge against the dash and the rest of us back to the floor we'd just climbed off. There was a series of thumps and an unpleasantly wet crunching sound as Tink reversed without checking his (nonexistent) mirrors, got us turned back around, and took of towards the hallway the Sorceress had taken.

On a highway you might've called the van's pace sedate, but inside was another matter. Tink tore down the halls, scattering people and decorative fixtures alike as we gained on our quarry. Twice we nearly missed her as she dodged down side-halls, and Tink nearly spun us out again on another carpeted section, but before long we had her square in our sights at the end of the Manor's narrowest hallway yet. Sarge, Doc, and Twitch all opened fire as Tink floored it.

In retrospect, we probably should've gone in on foot right then, because that hallway didn't turn out to be quite as wide as we'd thought. Well, actually it was, it's just that we hadn't taken all the furniture and such into account. It started with a couch getting stuck on the bumper instead of going under the tires, then came a bust-pedestal (the bust itself nearly took Sarge's head off as it sailed through our missing windshield) and a house-keeping trolley. Before we were even halfway to the Sorceress, veritable wave of furniture, knickknacks, carpets, and one unfortunate Goon had risen up in front of us, blocking our view and forcing us to a grinding halt.

Given the impossibility of opening any of the doors, Sarge and Doc just pushed a hole through the debris covering the windshield and the rest of us climbed out after them. The Sorceress didn't stick around to watch this of course, but fortunately a pair of terrified maids were able to point us in her direction. As we ditched the van (hopefully for good this time) and double-timed it down the hallway, we noticed a significant increase in the chatter on our combeads.

From the sound of it everything had hit the collective fan: our teammates up at the big party upstairs were caught up in some sort of firefight, a few of the others were yelling about chasing someone, and the other team had abandoned stealth in favor of racing to the vault. Interestingly, according to the map Tink got from them, the Sorceress was heading that way as well, and we were closer to it than almost everyone else thanks to the fact that we'd driven halfway through the Manor instead of walking like chumps. Sarge was about to point this out and offer to lend a hand, after we'd killed the Sorceress of course, but was interrupted as we rounded a corner and more or less ran face first into an entire Goonsquad.

The six eclectically-armed men were even more surprised than us; you could tell because we fired first. Now, we'd all been bitterly complaining about the quality of our current weapons, but against soft targets (like say, a bunch of idiots running into battle with no more armor than a cheap suit and a fedora) a lasgun does just fine. At that range we didn't even need to aim, hell, we didn't even stop, all five of us just held down the triggers and kept running. The only reason one of the poor dumb bastards survived long enough to *try* and return fire, was because the bulk of his comrades blocked our initial spray. Twitch and Nubby jogged backwards for a second and sorted that out while the rest of us fired at a blond, red-dress-wearing blur diving across the hall ahead of us.

By that point we were well and tired of the Sorceress' little psychic tricks. The bubble was the big annoyance of course, but she'd also tossed a few more of those lightning blasts over her shoulder as she ran, and we were pretty sure that her ability to move at a full sprint despite wearing a dress and high heels was some sort of warp trickery as well. Her dive across the hallway proved that last theory: not only was she moving at a speed one typically associates with aircraft, she also managed to shoot Sarge twice with an autopistol while doing it. Unfortunately for her, Sarge was wearing a bit more armor than the goons had been, and supernatural speed doesn't necessarily enable one to dive through three guardsmen's worth of fire. The Sorceress let out a little shriek of pain as one of Doc's shots finally penetrated her shield and clipped her leg; she only barely managed to stay on target and make it through the door, and there was a rather satisfying crashing sound from the far side of it. She still managed to shut it before any of us got to it though.

Unlike most of the other doors in the Manor, this one was fairly heavy and had an electronic lock. Tink's attempts to open it, first with his increasingly unreliable plasma weapon and then with his dataslate, failed miserably. Doc's idea to comm the tech-priest to see if he could open it remotely only got him a bunch of incoherent binary screeching before he was hung up on, so Twitch was about to use one of our limited supply of breaching charges, when Nubby turned up with a blood-soaked ID card along with a few other options. It turned out there wasn't actually a palm or retinal reader, but we did applaud his effort.

>>54597834Pre-written, but not pre-imaged or proofed. Honestly I could probably dump a whole chapter under two hours if I stopped this habit of trying to find thematically appropriate pics, or just used a random image folder like 2D.

We emerged into the stairwell on the far side of the door (we'd been hoping it'd just be a closet or something, but oh well), to find things a bit more lively than we'd expected. The Sorceress had made it a good four levels above us and was trying to keep a low profile. The dozen or so Goons engaged in a pitched gunfight a few levels above her, not so much. Judging by the familiar weapon sounds and the comm chatter, the guys on the far side of the gunfight were the second Inquisitor's team; we decided they probably had things under control, and kept our heads down as we sprinted upstairs after the Sorceress.

Whether due to the leg-injury or a finally running out of psychic steam, we steadily gained on the Sorceress, but she still managed to exit the stairwell (one level below the gunfight) before we could line up a shot worth taking. Fortunately, the ID card we'd acquired opened this door as well, and we piled out into a poshly-decorated hallway only a handful of seconds behind her.

The first thing Sarge, who was on point, saw as he came through the door, was another door directly opposite him. Said door was labeled "Security" and contained several Goons hastily grabbing heavy weapons and body armor. Before any of them could register what was going on, three grenades had sailed into the room, the door had been slammed shut, and a bust-bearing plinth had been braced against it. That little problem nipped in the bud, Sarge, Twitch, and Tink turned their attention down the hall to the right, where the Sorceress was sprinting towards an ornate pair of doors and screaming at the two men guarding it to help her. They did, of bloody course, which was a pretty terminally stupid decision on their part.

>>54597977No, Snitch was puking when Doc was "around" trying to treat him. It stopped when Doc handed care over to someone else. Sounds like some kind of warp fuckery to me.

Quote from Shoggy: "The one exception to this was Snitch, who'd developed some sort of irrational nausea around Doc, and kept spewing everywhere until the medic gave up and let someone else try treating the psyker's minor injuries and infections."

Sarge, Twitch, and Tink all grabbed cover in the little art-filled alcoves lining the hallway and poured fire at the Sorceress and two door guards, who appeared to be a better dressed and augmetically-upgraded variety of Goon. While the one on the left hosed the hall with a heavy stubber, the other keyed open the big doors, which the Sorceress almost managed to reach before her shield gave out with a sharp popping sound and she tumbled to the floor. For a second it looked like we'd finally done it, but our brief moment of victory was spoiled as the the right goon grabbed the traitorous bitch around the waist and carried her the last few steps through the doors. His buddy, still trying to lay down suppressive fire, very abruptly found himself alone, out of cover, and sole focus of three very annoyed guardsmen's attention.

At the rear, where Nubby had been left with Doc for obvious reasons, the two of them tossed their own pair of grenades into the unsuspecting Goon-squad on the level above them before joining the rest of us in the hall as the door-guard finally went down. The fancy doors behind him proved to be more decorative than functional, so it was only a few seconds before we were through them and into what appeared to be some sort of art museum, and not a small one either. At Sarge's signal everyone split up to begin searching for signs of our target, but we only got about a dozen steps before deep metallic grinding sound drew our attention to the far end of the room.

All of us (including Nubby, despite Sarge's orders to the contrary) sprinted through the maze of displays and velvet ropes towards what turned out to be a large slowly-opening vault. We arrived just in time to watch as, with a little triumphant smile in our direction, the Sorceress shot the man that'd just opened the vault for her in the head, and slipped through the door as it slammed back shut and alarms began to blare.

>>54598161Countertip: 80% of the AGP problems have been blamed on psykers (Fumbles excluded), the rest on incompetent superiors (a good bit of venn overlap in the first two groups there), and Orks.

Snitch was already down the corruption path, and was next door to something spooky getting splatted (immediately after having warp phenomia/perils). Okay, you convinced me: Snitch is the hidden daemonhost.

We weren't actually too concerned about the alarms, security seemed to be a little preoccupied currently, but the half-dozen las-turrets that descended from the ceiling as the vault went into lockdown were another matter. Everyone grabbed cover behind the biggest, most expensive exhibits available, and stuck to them as the turrets started scanning back and forth. The question of just how good these turrets were was answered by Tink, who poked his nose out to try and line up a shot while the one closest to him was turned away, and very nearly got his head blown off as it spun to face him far faster than he could draw a bead himself.

After a few seconds of pondering the situation himself, Sarge asked if anyone had any clever ideas for getting us unpinned. Tink had a few, but they all seemed to require either his drone or other plasma weapon; Sarge told him to cram a sock in it. Nubby's suggestion that we smoke the entire room and hope we were better at spotting the turrets than they were at spotting us was rejected when the trooper refused to actually test it himself. Twitch's idea to just chuck explosives everywhere and hope the turrets all failed before the ceiling did was, as usual, made Plan B, and Sarge regretfully went with Doc's suggestion. Our fearless leader took a deep breath, put on his most professional-sounding voice, and commed Sciscitat for help.

The Inquisitor was incredulous, to say the least, but after a few probing questions, some cogitator checks of his own, and a slightly-sarcastic description of our current location from Sarge, he acknowledged that not only had we cornered the Sorceress, we'd done it in the exact vault where the artifact was located. He had far less trouble believing that we'd gotten our self pinned down by a bunch of turrets.

At Sciscitat's instruction we sat on our hands for a tense few minutes, until we abruptly received word from the tech-priest that the las-turrets were temporarily offline and we had ten seconds get to the control panel next to the vault to permanently disable them. Sarge and Doc both immediately sprang up and had just enough time to get fully out of cover before the turrets arounds them opened fire. Doc was saved by Twitch, who realized that something was off and yanked the medic into his own cover as he began to run past. Sarge was less lucky: Tink was equally distrustful of the tech-priest, but wasn't in position to offer much more than a bit of ineffective suppressive fire as the noncom scrambled to find new cover.

Bleeding from fairly bad arm, leg, and side wounds, and trying to make himself as small as possible behind a marble statue a good deal thinner and more shapely than he was, Sarge cursed into his combead and pointed out that the turrets definitely weren't down. An annoyed-sounding Sciscitat said to give him a few minutes, and informed us all that if we couldn't follow orders and sit still for five damn minutes we deserved to get shot. After a few seconds of sputtering rage, Sarge pointed out what the tech-priest had said; the Inquisitor told him to stop making up excuses and accept that he'd made a mistake like an adult. None of us could actually hear the bastard tech-priest's snickering as Sciscitat berated Sarge for trying to shift blame onto his teammates, but we all knew he was and silently agreed that This Meant War.

By the time las-turrets had finally been deactivated for real, and we'd very carefully tested the fact using the time honored helmet-on-a-stick technique, Sarge had collected three more minor las wounds. Doc immediately went to work treating the noncom as well as his own arm wound, while the rest of us debated what to do about the trapped Sorceress. Sciscitat's instructions were to hold position and wait for "the real Inquisitorial agents" to show up and deal with her, but we weren't quite sure our combeads had transmitted those orders correctly though. From the sound of it, those "real" agents were having one hell of a time getting to our position, and we were feeling a bit uneasy about how smug our old boss had looked as she locked herself in that vault.

Tink poked around the vault's brain-spattered controls a bit, and was able to find a vid feed of the interior, but it was only showing static. Twitch examined the vault's exterior, even leaning out the windows to check the one flush with the Manor's outer wall, he discovered no hidden doors and a lot of squiggly sigil-things which were probably there to foil anyone trying to get in or out using magic. Reassured that the Sorceress was probably still inside, he and Tink unilaterally decided to start melting a detpack-sized hole in the door. When Nubby asked, they told him it was an air hole.

The hole was just over halfway through and Sarge was ambulatory, if not happy, when time very abruptly ran out. We weren't the best informed about what'd been happening before then, we'd been listening to what comm chatter we could overhear, and Sciscitat had said something about the rest of the team needing his guidance with a more important problem as he'd signed off, but that was just general stuff. The first real clue we got that something had gone badly wrong was when someone started frantically screaming "DAEMONHOST" over the general channel.

We weren't in any position to watch what went down, all we knew was that the situation on the level above us went to shit in a matter of seconds. From what we could gather, the other Inquisitor and his entire team had finally reached a position only a level above us and the vault. They'd been preparing to come join us via a short rappel in and out the exterior windows, and then the screaming started.

After that there'd been a lot of gunfire, explosions, and what felt like some seriously warpy stuff. We weren't sure exactly what was going on up there, only that it involved the Sorceress' pet Daemonhost, and that it really wasn't going well for our allies. After nearly a minute of this, Doc raised the question of whether we should go help them; not that any of us wanted to get anywhere near a Daemonhost, but if we had to, it'd be better do it with the guys upstairs, as opposed to after the thing had finished killing and eating them. Sarge agreed and was checking with Twitch whether we could blast up to them instead of going all the way back to the stairs, when someone upstairs yelled something about their Inquisitor. There was a blast of screaming warp energy and faint sense of distant, terrible heat, followed by a more mundane explosion that collapsed a section of ceiling just next to where Twitch had been about to place his charges. Before any of us could try climbing up this new hole, there was a shout of "STOP HIM", a shattering sound, and something black and flappy dropped past the windows next to us.

The falling object turned out to be a man in a big black coat as opposed to some sort of daemonic bird-monster. We still shot at it though, just out of reflex, but failed to score any hits and quickly gave up in favor of watching whoever it was fall a few hundred stories to their death. That wasn't what happened though; instead, the small figure below us spread his coat out like some sort of parachute, which seemed to do a lot more to slow his fall than the laws of physics dictated. As we watched, the man glided outwards, barely missing the widening spire below us, and swooping through the two lanes of air-traffic crossing below us.

Any question of whether the thing below us was the Daemonhost vanished as he pulled of an obviously supernatural series of acrobatics, striking glancing blows off fliers, doing a one-handed pirouette around a protruding vox antenna, and briefly dangling off a passing servo-skull. Even more impressive (given our own experience with hive traffic), was the way that the fliers he didn't purposely hit went out of their way to avoid him. Whether it was telepathy, the sheltering hand of a dark god, or pure bloody luck, the man (if you could call him that) left a path of confusion and destruction behind him as fliers swerved out of his way, sometimes right into oncoming traffic or the hive around them. It was an impressive and terrifying display, but on the bright side, every second it continued put him farther away from us. We all breathed a sigh of relief as, with a last little midair flip, he vanished into the permanent smog layer below.

Most of us had turned away towards more pressing tasks, when a panicked choking sound from Twitch called our attention back to the window. We watched in disbelieving horror, as a flier suddenly rose up out of the clouds with a small, black-coated figure standing proudly on its roof. Our opinion on the matter was summed up for us as someone upstairs screamed "BULLSHIT" and opened fire.

>>54595552>>54595699Woohoo! Made it today!Textures on the interior are stretched, but to be fair, beyond the dials it wasn't really intended to be super high res on the interior, considering it'd be barely visible at best. Unfortunately, the Occurrence Border didn't end up nearly as "good", since a couple things I tried out didn't work very well, plus that may have been a bit much to chew off as a student on a deadline. Models were fun as hell to make though, RPM: LITTLE and LOTS was a hell of a lot of fun to make.

All of us started shooting at the Daemonhost-carrying flier as well, not that we stood any chance of accomplishing anything at that range, but what else were we supposed to do? Well actually, we probably should've backed the hell up and stayed out of sight, but it took us a few seconds to figure out that the vehicle which the Daemonhost was oh so nonchalantly riding wasn't actually a "flier". No, the correct term was "Gunship", or to be more precise, a Vendetta Variant Valkyrie Airborne Assault Carrier. The realisation that we were looking more or less directly down the barrels of six lascannons hit us just in time, and we scrambled back just barely ahead of a series of blasts that more or less atomised everything within three meters of the windows we'd been standing at.

Stalwart guardsman that we were, we didn't let a little thing like being MASSIVELY outgunned deter us. While we might've been a bit more on the prudent side than certain superiors of ours liked, we knew the Daemonhost's goal was to free the Sorceress, and the only way we were going to allow that to happen was over our dead bodies. Or at least over the other team's. Sarge shouted a hold-fire order up the hole in the ceiling, Doc commed Sciscitat to ask in any of our teammates were going to show up but didn't get an answer, and the rest of us spread out into ambush positions. The plan, if you could call it that, was a simple one: shoot the gunship down as stopped to level out with us, ideally before the Daemonhost had time to jump off it. By all reasonable logic, it should've worked.

The gunship, its daemonic passenger no longer perched on the roof, leveled off directly in front of us, and three lasguns, an oversized plasma pistol, and a krak-launcher all fired simultaneously. Not a single shot hit its target.

It was horrifying, almost like we'd all simultaneously been replaced with a bunch of raw PDF recruits. Both Sarge and Doc's guns sprayed sparks out their power packs in the lasgun equivalent of a catastrophic weapon jam. Nubby's still fired, but stitched a line of shots across the room, hitting both Twitch and Tink in the process, as half a kilo of powdered masonry was blown into his eyes. Tink, who was more ready for a weapons failure than the rest of us, immediately dropped his overheating plasma weapon, only to then fall directly onto it as Nubby's shot hit him in the leg.

As bad as all that was, what happened to Twitch was even worse. Despite taking a hit in the side, he fired our last single-shot krak launcher directly on target. The missile was halfway between the windows and the gunship when, I shit you not, a pigeon that'd been nesting on the building's exterior flapped directly into its path. The impact fuse, which shouldn't have activated on such a soft target, did. All of us, even Tink, boggled as Twitch's missile went off in a blast of flames, concussive force, and charred feathers a good five meters short of its maximum effective radius, and then dove for cover as the gunship returned fire.

To our amazement, none of us were killed by the salvo of lascannon shots, but that was only because the gunship turned out not to have actually been aiming for us. As the vault's perforated outer wall fell outwards with a scream of tearing metal, the gunship spun around to reveal its open troop bay, where the suddenly horribly familiar figure of the "Daemonhost" stood waiting.

We watched in dawning horror as, with a psychicly-propelled jump, the Sorceress leapt across the gap to gunship's troop compartment and into the waiting arms of fellow ex-Interrogator, and self-styled Interplanetary Man of Mystery, Bane Johns.

>>54598847>>54598747Like I get that shoggy brings reddit to /tg/ every time he posts a storytime, but please try to lurk for a bit to understand basic posting conventions. Rule of thumb, if your posts don't look like everyone else's, and people are getting pissed at you, the problem might be with YOU and not with the other posters.

>And there's the really big art piece. Been sitting on that one for a fucking while. Anyway, that's all I've got folks. The chapter ain't quite done, but I said I'd post this weekend, so there it is.

>For those of you who don't mind the minorest of spoilers:

>We have a half-session's worth of content left before we're to the final chapter. A bit of escaping, a bit of planning, a lot of violence and the most dubiously ethical of shenanigans, and finally a big-ol' pile of post-mission exposition.

>If I keep the current pace of 1-2 posts a day, and can avoid getting even more overly wordy, I expect to get the chapter finale out at about the end of August. From there, I may sit down and do some editing if any of the volunteers are still left around, and then it's on to the final chapter of the Adventures of the All Guardsmen Party.

>Anyway, sorry this has taken so long (and that it keeps getting wordier and wordier), and thank you so much for all the kind words folks have sent my way during the horrific pile of shit that was this past year (and I am so sorry for all the emails I've only read, and not responded to). Thanks so much for sticking with me, and I hope to the Emperor the ending of this one and the final chapter that follows live up to expectations.

>>54598960Holy fuck this ride only gets trippyer as time goes on and I love it. Thank you for your tales Shoggy, you and everyone who helped make this epic of madness and hand grenades is a fucking Living Saint. Emprah-speed, and we'll be sad to see you go.

>>54598960Shoggy you magnificent bastard, I cannot wait to find out more, I am litterally sitting here wondering how the actual fuck the party is going to solve this one. thank you for this update and cannot wait to see more

>>54599057Aside from possibly doing another Movies as RPGs thread or two, not really. We've tentatively scheduled some more sessions (no idea what system, or if they'll be one shots or what) for January, so that might be worth writing about. Honestly I never wrote before all this, maybe I'll go back to other projects, like the DF megaprojects I shelved, or some of the game mods I used to poke at. I honestly got no idea, my current goal is just to actually make it to the finish instead of breaking down and posting the notes.

>>54599241You can drop me an email at the address on the archive, but I may wave you off until I've sorted out the rest of this chapter, since I want it to be collaborative but can't really justify slowing the writing of an unfinished chapter.

I wonder how Scicistat is gonna react to being told that AGP actually knows well both the Sorceress and the Daemonhost, and that they actually handed them off to Inquisition once before.Maybe it would be wiser not to tell him, lest he suspects them of heresy. Then again, the other Inquisitor is probably gonna read it in their minds anyway. No way they're not gonna freak out on that one, and seriously, their team does need all the information they could have on those two to do anything with them.Or maybe it won't even come to that. They didn't escape yet.

>>54597278>As we burst through the flaming wreckage into the courtyard, wildly firing out in every direction and screaming at the top of our lungs, Twitch paused to ask himself if, WE were the real Orks all along.